So today is the day that we all knew was coming but were dreading, departure day. Staying up all night packing and remembering our first days together it feels weird leaving now, it feels like I’m leaving home. Im so happy that I went on this trip with this group of people, I couldn’t have imagined a better group to go to Paris with. We stayed up talking about how it feels like we only just arrived at the Cite but going back and actually talking about our favorite parts of the trip made us realize how much we have done and that it has been 3 weeks. Three weeks of packed schedules, museums, tours, cafes and sightseeing the days start to blend together, in a good way. The goodbyes have been hard, to our favorite food places that quickly became “our place” we called him “the crepe man” and he was really our best friend here.
Saying good bye to this city, on our walk back from a bakery we got breakfast at it started lightly raining and we looked a each and said the city was sad for us to go. Leaving my room this morning for the airport I looked around my room to make sure I had all my belongings and I got this feeling that I would be back here for certain. On the RER to the airport I was expecting to feel really sad about leaving but it ended up not being so bad of a ride because we just talked about how much fun we’ve had on this trip and are planning our reunion back in Lowell already. Once in the airport and our professors had to leave us it really started sinking in, this is the end… of this program. As we were boarding the plane we saw our last french ads and listened to our last french announcements, it hit me, we have been LIVING in France for the last 3 weeks. We came here as students visiting a country, tourists, and ended up feeling like we could belong there. The flight to Dublin was short and I kept feeling like we weren’t complete as Jia, Lilly our professors remained in Paris. It will be strange coming back to America and readjusting to our culture and not being with this amazing group every day. This was an amazing trip and I met amazing people during our time abroad. Even if I don’t see some of the friends I made we will always have Paris.